“He’s delirious. St. Martin to Shackleton, prep the medical bay for surgery. Donovan’s been compromised by some kind of alien parasite. We’re en route now.”
“Roger that, Doctor. Preparation under way.”
Marcus was still sitting in the molded white seat, and he wasn’t sure how long he’d been out. His head was swimming like he’d just woken up from a fevered dream. Intense images and feelings flashed behind his eyes, but they were slowing down and coming less frequently. Meanwhile, Juliette was not-so-gently trying to pull him to his feet.
“Nonsense. Shackleton, belay that order,” he said, and pushed her away. “I’m fine.”
“Damn you, Marc, it’s in your brain!”
That should have bothered him more, and he knew it. Hell, he could hardly stand getting a flu inoculation, yet here he was with an alien machine plugged directly into his grey matter and it was all okay. The ship assured him it was perfectly safe and necessary.
“It’s okay, Juliette. It’s an interface, nothing more. It allows me to communicate with the ship.” He pulled up memories that weren’t his own, recollections of when the device was first designed and tested. The feeling was indescribably strange. “The interface was originally manufactured… errr, grown I guess, as an emergency fall back in case something interfered with telepathy. Our species has deficient receptor organs, so I needed it to make contact.”
“The ship told you this?” Rao asked.
“More or less.” The process felt completely intuitive, yet words were failing him. It was like trying to describe color to the blind. “I don’t hear voices or anything. I get ideas and feelings from her, and memories. Damn, the memories are something else.”
Part of the device wriggled inside his head, and he convulsed. The spasm was slight, like a nervous tick, but it was nonetheless unpleasant.
“Jeee-zus,” Faulkland said. “You’re a mess.”
Juliette pulled a hypodermic needle out of her pack. “If you won’t come willingly, we’ll take you by force. God only knows what that thing’s doing to you, Marc.” Two crewmen flanked her as she spoke.
“I wouldn’t do that,” Marcus said, and the ship agreed. A pair of ropey tendrils emerged from the ceiling and lowered towards the crewmen. He told the ship that wouldn’t be necessary, and the tendrils paused, then slowly receded. “Believe me when I say this: she’ll be very, very displeased if I’m sedated against my will, and we don’t want to make her angry. Just trust me a little, Juliette.” He gave her a reaffirming nod. “Trust me.”
Juliette’s brow furrowed and her jaw tightened as she considered Marcus’ plea. She finally waved the crewmen away and they stood down. “Fine. But I don’t like it.”
“Of course not. You’re a good doctor. I need you to keep an eye on this thing, alright? Check for signs of rejection. An adverse reaction could kill me.” He could feel that the ship liked Juliette, and he smirked. “So do I,” he accidentally said aloud.
Faulkland leaned over the circular railing with an unusually large smile on his face. He was loving every minute of this. “So, we should all get used to you being double extra crazy?”
“God, I hope not.” As if on cue, the device’s tendrils moved inside his skull again and he jerked. “Just need a little time to acclimate. How long was I out, anyway?”
Juliette had her medical probe drawn and was scanning the side of his head. “About thirty seconds from when it struck to when you started talking. You were in REM sleep.”
Marcus said, “Felt like days.”
The ship informed him that the battle he experienced took several days to complete. “I guess that makes sense,” he replied, then shook his head as he realized he was speaking aloud again. It was going to take some getting used to.
Juliette finished her examination with a sigh, and finally stepped back. “Everything seems alright. There’s a little bit of inflammation around the wounds, but nothing serious. Less than I’d expect, in fact. Let me know immediately if it starts to itch or burn.”
“Will do,” Marcus said with a sigh, glad to have a little space to breathe again. It was bad enough having someone new in his head, let alone being poked and prodded like a lab rat.
His gaze swept the rest of the room, and the place was now familiar, all except for the thirty-some-odd Eireki milling around in pressure suits. That was a little out of the ordinary. He called up memories of the room, and the ship responded with the different configurations it could assume. The variety was staggering. He selected one with an abundance of the molded seats, and the room shifted to accommodate. “Care to have a seat?”
The crew responded with understandable caution. The ship informed him that many were terrified and vividly imagined arms pinning them down and jamming bugs into their heads. He made a mental note about establishing some sort of privacy policy.
“At ease, folks. She’s not gonna bite. She won’t do anything to you against your will, and she’s frankly having enough trouble dealing with one of these things right now,” he said while tapping the device on his temple. “I called up the chairs because it’s awkward being the only person in a room sitting.”
No one sat down. Marcus stood instead and allowed the chairs to melt back into the floor.
Rao was staring at him, and looked to be a thousand leagues deep in thought. If he weren’t wearing a helmet, he’d undoubtedly be stroking his week-old beard.
“Question, Jay?”
“Too many to count. How about this… what the hell happened when you touched the generator?”
“She was asleep and had been for a very long time. When I touched the hollow-drive, it jumped to max output and woke her up. She flew into a panic, like waking up from a nightmare with your heart pounding.”
“If she was asleep,” Juliette asked, “how did the doors and tubes work?”
“Reflex. It’s by design. If she’s incapacitated, her crew would still be able to navigate the ship and escape if necessary.”
“Alright,” Rao said, “and she brought us here to latch that thing to your head?”
“That’s part of it. She wanted a good look at the invaders, to determine if we were hostile. Once she realized who we are, she made contact through the device.”
“Who we are? What’s that supposed to mean?”
Marcus took a moment to collect his scattered thoughts, and put them in order. Bits and pieces of history were streaming into him, but whole massive swaths were mysteriously missing. The ship was forgetful, and he hoped it was just that she was still waking up, but she offered no explanation.
“Right. There’s a really long answer to that question, but the short version is… uhhh… we’re aliens?”
Confused faces all around said he’d need to come up with a slightly longer answer.
“Alright, let’s try the story book version. Once upon a time, there was a civilization that had stretched itself across the entire galaxy. They called themselves Eireki, and they were peaceful, enlightened creatures, who communicated with each other through telepathy. They were also masters of technology, able to manufacture intelligent living machines like this ship.”
There was a step in the sequence which Marcus couldn’t piece together, and every attempt to get hold of it left him empty handed.
He went on. “For the longest time, they believed they were alone in the universe. They found other planets with strange and wonderful life, but none of it was intelligent. Not yet at least, so the Eireki became stewards, fostering life wherever they found it in hopes of one day meeting creatures like themselves. That was until the Nefrem arrived… the enemy.”
There was something wrong or missing there, too. He couldn’t pin-point what it was, but it just didn’t feel right.
“The Nefrem came from outside the galaxy in a living planet that was both their ship and breeding ground. They were twisted demons who devoured life. They absorbed new gene-sequences, keeping whatever was valuable and discarding the rest, while recycling the flesh itself into their own perverted idea of order.
“As you might’ve guessed, war erupted between the Eireki and Nefrem. It was savage and bloody, and stretched on for millennia. Both sides grew stronger, angrier and more effective through the conflict, and by its end, they were shattering whole planets in their efforts to exterminate one another.
“The war finally came to a head with a single cataclysmic battle which involved the entirety of both races and their trillions of warships. The fighting was fierce and laid waste to the system where it was fought. When the smoke cleared, the only survivors were this ship and the Nefrem’s living planet. Nemesis.
“The remaining Eireki knew that approaching the living planet meant death, since it produced a… like, a psychic signal that destroyed Eireki minds. They had no choice, though, so they charged the living planet and pushed it backward into a gas giant. Then the ship fired until the gas giant erupted into an artificial star.”
“And the demons were destroyed?” Faulkland asked.
“No. I know this sounds impossible, but it was only a prison. The Nefrem technology was capable of channeling and redirecting the star’s energy into a protective shell. I don’t really understand it, but she’s confident they survived, trapped and dormant all this time, and will survive the star’s eventual collapse, as well.
“Which leads to the ‘us being aliens’ part. The Eireki knew the Nefrem would eventually break free and begin their conquest all over again, so as their dying command, they sent the ship on a final mission. They’d found a planet uncannily like their own homeworld, which they kept secret from the Nefrem. They called it the Garden.
“It had abundant life of its own, and the Eireki thought it a strong candidate to eventually produce its own intelligent life, but they couldn’t take any chances with the future. They sent the ship to break their most sacred law and seed the planet with their own genetic material.”
“And you’re telling us that this Garden is Earth,” Juliette said.
“Yep. And we’re the Eireki reborn.”
“Then why aren’t we telepathic?”
“So we could fight the living planet,” Marcus said. “Telepathy was an amazing boon to the Eireki people, but it also became their greatest weakness. They couldn’t even approach the enemy because of it. The ship claims there have been unexpected side effects, though. They never had culture anything like ours, for instance.”
“Wait,” Professor Caldwell said. He’d been listening intently the whole time, but the story was just now beginning to click for him. “When you came around, you said sixty-five million years. Are you telling me this ship caused the K-T Extinction Event?”
“Spot on. She’s not proud of it, but there was no choice in the matter. It was done with a high-velocity orbital weapon that choked our atmosphere, and infected whatever survived with retroviruses. The rest is history.”
“And the ship?”
“Came here, wrapped herself in a cocoon and slept away the eons, waiting for us to reclaim her.”
“I’ve never been a fan of exogenesis theories,” Juliette said, “but at least you didn’t tell me alien astronauts built the pyramids.”
Marcus laughed. “You’re all taking this surprisingly well.”
Faulkland slapped him on the back. “Pal, we’re inside a living spaceship that can read our minds. You could tell us this thing’s made of delicious marshmallow floating in a giant cup of cocoa, and I don’t think anyone would bat an eye.”
“It’s a little disappointing,” Professor Caldwell said, “I mean, it’s all fantastic beyond belief. Don’t get me wrong. But my entire career is about piecing together theories about ancient peoples. Instead, all the answers have been laid out on a silver platter.”
“I dunno,” Rao said, “it’s like a time capsule. A message in a bottle from the ancient past. That’s pretty exciting in its own right. Besides, we still have plenty to learn about the ship. And think of where she can take us, of what cultures we’ve yet to meet.” Rao’s eyes were full of stars.
“I suppose you’ve got a point there,” Caldwell said.
Faulkland dramatically coughed into his hand. “Excuse me, but am I the only one wondering about the dark, evil space demons? And what the hell is this room, anyway?”
“This room,” Marcus said, “is the bridge.”
As he spoke, the walls faded from white to black, and then lit up with the stars and asteroids all around them. The shiny metallic Shackleton was visible, floating a safe distance away. The image all around was crystal clear and perfect, just like being out in space except without a bulky helmet to get in the way.
Everyone was taken aback, and several stumbled and fell over.
“Hot damn,” Faulkland said. “That’s one hell of a view.”
Rao climbed back up to his feet shakily. “You’ve got to warn people before you do these things, Marc.”
“Sorry,” Marcus said with a smirk. “As for the Nefrem, the ship’s still updating her star charts, trying to determine just how long she’s been out. If everything went according to plan, though, we should have plenty of time to gather a fleet and give them a proper howdy-doo.”
A memory suddenly surged through Marcus’ mind, and he assumed it was the ship’s doing. The memory was vivid, like being back there again. He and his family were standing on the porch, taking turns looking through the rusty, old telescope his uncle had given him. There was a fantastic light show. Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky, had exploded into a multicolored eye-shaped burst as bright as the full moon. The next day, they could still see it in broad daylight, and it continued that way for two years.
The memory faded and Marcus stumbled to the side. “Oh damn,” he said, “estimates were off. We were slow.”
“And the demons are free,” Faulkland guessed.
Marcus said, “Sirius B. That was what, twenty-five years ago, right?”
“A little more,” Rao said, “plus eight point six light-years. Thirty-four years, all told.”
The words struck him, and the ship started to assimilate the new information. They were behind schedule, he knew that much, and the ship was busy estimating how badly. After a moment, she began to fill him in on Nefrem tactics.
The Nemesis would require two to three years just to resume normal functioning after its release, at which point it would still be too weak for interstellar travel. It would enter emergency resource acquisition mode. Scouts would be constructed and sent to locate nearby accumulations of life, followed by fleets that would strip and return digestible biomass. The process would continue until the living planet was at nominal strength, with no fewer than three full battle fleets. That could take anywhere from ten to forty years, depending on the population of nearby stars, and after that, real conquest would begin.
“I’ve got good news and bad news,” Marcus said. “The bad news is that they’re definitely free, and we have no way of knowing how many planets have already fallen. The good news is that their living planet won’t be at full strength yet. Not like it was during the war, at least. More of a big living asteroid.”
“Will they come for Earth?” Faulkland asked. “Should we be mounting defenses?”
Marcus shook his head. “No, they won’t be coming here. She’s pretty certain of that. As far as they know, our system is dead and insignificant. It’s like a hypnotic suggestion. They’ll eventually see through it, though, and we must have them on the defensive before that happens. If they get here, it’ll already be too late.
“It’s imperative that we get the ship back in working order as soon as possible. There should be enough raw material here in the asteroid belt to make repairs. Then we return to Earth and start building our own fleet. All life in the galaxy depends on it.”
“Do you know how to do any of that?” Juliette asked.
Marcus shook his head. “Not exactly, but we’ll figure it out.” The ship told him they’d figure it out together, then she passed another message that Marcus thought strange. It was a request. “She’s digging around in my head, trying to get a hang on how we process thoughts. Our language, the syntax and ways we name things. It’s all messy and very new to her. She… she wants me to give her a name.”
“Go ahead,” Faulkland said. “I’ve always had a weakness for girls’ names, myself.”
Rao looked at Marcus seriously. “Something better than Zebra-One, this time.”
Marcus ran through a string of girls’ names, but none of them seemed appropriate. This ship was more than just a vessel. She was a remembrance of things forgotten. She was a gift and a responsibility handed down from the past. Then the name came to him. “It’s only right to call her Legacy.”
Legacy approved.